Star Fox 64 Follow-Up Title Was Pitched For Wii U, But Retro Studios Passed On It

Authored by nintendolife.com and submitted by IP3LEE

It has been a good few years now since we last checked in with everyone's favourite fox fighter pilot in Star Fox Zero (seven years, to be precise) and the chances of him returning to the Switch seem to lessen everyday. In the ensuing period while we wait (fingers tightly crossed) for news of a series reboot, the good folk over on the DidYouKnowGaming? YouTube channel have been digging into one of the series' cancelled titles at Retro Studios.

In its most recent video, the channel got a chance to talk to Eric Kozlowsky, a former Retro Studios artist, who had pitched a game titled 'Star Fox Armada' back in early 2013. While the studio would eventually pass on the title, Kozlowsky shared his 24-page pitch document with the channel and discussed many of the game's proposed features.

Star Fox Armada was to be a follow-up to Star Fox 64 both narratively and in terms of gameplay. This was not going to be a title à la Star Fox Adventures where you would see McCloud hopping out of his ship to tackle enemies on foot, oh no; instead, Armada was proposed as classic Star Fox through and through — taking out foes while flying through space. The story would see the team attempting to rebuild the Lylat System after the fall of Andross, throwing it right back to the 1997 N64 title.

In terms of an aesthetic, Kozlowsky was aware that the Wii U couldn't keep up with the PS4 or Xbox One in terms of realistic graphics, so had pitched the game as having puppet-like visuals much like the series' early promotional material.This would have allowed the team at Retro to still create a convincing anthropomorphised squad, without the need to make them look uncannily real — we're picturing 'Fantastic Mr. Star Fox' once again...

And what about the 'Armada' of the title? The game was pitched with a heavy online aspect, letting you build your own team of animal pilots to take the galaxy by storm. This would have resulted in massive online dogfights with your friends and surprise attacks from other squads while you were busy in missions.

Unfortunately, Retro passed on this pitch supposedly with little debate. For the full details of everything that Armada was hoping to achieve, however, check out the complete Did You Know Gaming? video below:

Will Star Fox make a surprise return for Nintendo's next console? Let us know what you'd like to see from a follow-up title in the comments!

Malt___Disney on February 7th, 2023 at 14:18 UTC »

Why has there still not been a legit Starfox

mjm132 on February 7th, 2023 at 10:48 UTC »

How quickly we all forget that a new star fox did come out on wii u.

CaptnBanana on February 7th, 2023 at 05:49 UTC »

Man I would've loved to see a Star Fox 65.